The Crackers Were Probably Bad Luck Anyway
by smellslikecorruption
Summary: I want to erase every nasty thought that bugs me, every day of every week. Five Times Cat was most definitely not crazy.


AN: I started this one a while back, but I got inspired to finish it up today. I know there are a million fics like this out there, but I wanted to write one too. Cat fascinates me, because she can come across so dumb sometimes, but I kind of read her as being aware of how she comes across? Like she's doing it on purpose to a certain extent?

Cat-gen, but with a fair amount of Cat/Jade friendship. Mentions of Bade.

**The Crackers Were Probably Bad Luck Anyway**

…..

She's not crazy.

She's not her brother, okay? She just gets sad sometimes, and sometimes her chest gets tight and she can't breathe through the panic, but that doesn't mean she's crazy and besides, she has pills for that. So she's _perfectly fine_ (even if she has forgotten them four out of seven days this week).

….

At the summer workshops for kids who got into HA, she meets Jade and she meets Beck, and, God, they're so talented, both of them. When she tells them that, Jade says, "Yeah, you're alright too, I guess." Which, at the time, didn't seem like a big deal, but when she looks back later she realizes it kind of was.

It's an amazing summer. Finally, there are other kids who love acting and singing as much as she does and she's never felt like she belongs somewhere as much as she belongs here. Sometimes, it doesn't even matter what her brother's been doing at home, or how pinched her mother's face is getting, or how quiet her father has started to become. Because when she's performing they all just fade away and she is happier and calmer than she can remember ever being in her life.

….

Her hair is the exact shade of a red velvet cupcake. At least, that's the story.

She dye her hair red at the end of the summer, two days before she starts at Hollywood Arts and three days after her brother threw glass around and accidentally hit her with a jar. Jade is the one that comes up with that first lie, the only one who guesses why Cat's standing in the aisle of the drugstore trying to find blood red hair dye. Jade grabbed a box and told her the color would be perfect.

"Because you want to dye it the same color as red velvet cupcakes, right? You don't have to try and lie to me about that."

Jade raises her eyebrow, and Cat giggles.

"Yeah. That's why!"

….

She knows exactly where she is. Of course she knows where she is. She's stood on the other side of those walls with her mother, listening to all the doctors' talktalktalk about her brother. But if she just acts hard enough, no one will know (Jade will know, and Beck will know, and Andre might know, but they won't tell. But they will find her. Jade always finds her).

So Cat bonks the red cubes on her head, and pretends to be a superhero, and lies on the floor, and waits for her friends to find her, and tries to ignore how messed up it is that they came to the hospital in the first place because Robbie thinks that Rex is real, and she's still somehow the one who ended up in the mental ward.

She's quiet on the way home, sitting absolutely still and staring out the window of Beck's truck. A mile away from the hospital it fully hits her that she was in a _padded room_. And it doesn't even matter that it was mistake, because she's somehow become the kind of person who can be mistaken for insane and oh god, oh god she's not crazy, she's not him, she's _not_. She starts to shake and she can't catch her breath and her heart feels like it's going to explode out of her chest and she's a little concerned that she might puke.

Cool hands frame her face and Jade's voice demands to know if she took her pills that morning. When she shakes her head, Jade nods and starts to rub her arms, her back, her hair, until the panic passes. Until she's sobbing brokenly into Jade's shoulder.

….

She gets happier. Stays happier. Takes too many pills in the mornings, because no one's watching her and the double dose helps her keep the act up.

She's sliding out of control and she knows it. Acts cuter, and dumber, and younger, and happier. Stops getting angry at weird moments. Stops getting angry at all.

Because babyish Cat Valentine, or dumb Cat Valentine or annoyingly peppy Cat Valentine is still better than Crazy Cat Valentine.

She'd rather be stupid than broken.

No one calls her on it. Tori really hasn't been around long enough to notice that's something's up, and Andre never pries into people's business, and Robbie-

Well. Robbie doesn't say anything, but once Rex does, which has to mean that some part of Robbie knows, right?

Jade knows (which means Beck knows, too) but she doesn't say a thing. Just goes along with it, occasionally feeding the flames the way she did with the hair dye.

….

She shocks everyone (or at least the act shocked. It's hard to tell sometimes) by getting fantastic scores on her SATs and getting accepted at some really amazing schools.

She goes to a design school on the other side of the country. Not one single person knows her there (except for Jade who's a few states away, living in New York and, later, Beck who followed Jade).

She stops playing dumb. She stops playing anything.

She grows up.

It get's easier to breathe.


End file.
